The School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD) is a highly selective professional school encompassing programs in music, dance, theatre, and musical theatre.
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If you wish to elect graduate courses to increase your knowledge, improve your professional skills, or to test your capabilities in a graduate setting, but do not wish to pursue a degree, you may apply for admission as a Non-Candidate for Degree (NCFD). Admission requirements are the same as for regular admission. NCFD status carries no implication with respect to subsequent regular admission to any graduate program.

This page contains answers to frequently-asked questions. If you do not see the answer to your question here, it may be because the answer is in another section of the admissions page. Feel free to email us at smtd.admissions@umich.edu or call (734) 764-0583 for an answer to your query.

The School of Music, Theatre & Dance is a highly selective professional school encompassing programs in music, dance, theatre, and musical theatre on a beautiful campus set in the culturally rich, quintessential college town of Ann Arbor.

Kwasi Ampene

Professor Kwasi Ampene is a scholar and practitioner of ethnomusicology. He specializes in the rich musical traditions of the Akan people of West Africa. His research interests include the performing arts as individually and collectively created and experienced, the performance of historical and social memory, politics, ideologies, values, and religious philosophy in Akan court music. He has disseminated his research in conferences, workshops, and speaking engagements at major universities in the United States and around the world. He has also provided expert advice for public engagement projects on West African culture and music to institutions such as the British Library, Tufts University, and Princeton University.

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Ampene is the author of many journal articles and books including Engaging Modernity: Asante in the Twenty-First Century (Michigan, 2016); Discourses in African Musicology: J.H. Kwabena Nketia Festschrift (Michigan, 2015); and Female Song Tradition and the Akan of Ghana: The Creative Process in Nnwonkorɔ (Ashgate, 2005).

Ampene is currently working on a monograph titled Experience and Values in Asante Court Music and Verbal Arts. The work comes out of his extensive field research at the Asante King’s court in Kumasi-Ghana, where since 2009, he has been given rare and unrestricted access to the centuries-old heritage of stool regalia and other heirlooms. He is documenting esoteric song and instrumental texts, as well as texts of referential poetry by bards and members of the constabulary.